To my knowledge, with plenty of carbon emisssions
Is it less than using fossil fuels for power exclusively? If so then itโs a step in the right direction. Yes I know it sounds like Iโm shilling for BP now but we get lost in the doom spiral so fast we forget we are indeed making progress. We just have to keep their feet to the fire orโฆermโฆ solar panel?
Theyโre not using electrolysis and water to make hydrogen, theyโre using power and steam to crack petroleum products into hydrogen.
And this is still a large step in the right direction, because cheap hydrogen creates an incentive to develop hydrogen infrastructure, which increases the demand for hydrogen, and can help lay the groundwork for a future in which hydrogen is produced from renewable sources.
Also, steam reforming lends itself well to CCS, and as such it can be performed without carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, no. Itโs not. However, there is some nuance here. Even though their approach is more polluting, it allows infrastructure down the line such as modern cars to be upgraded to use hydrogen.
The hydrogen factory can then later be replaced by a non-polluting one. Much like how a lot of places switched to electricity while the power was being generated by natural gas. Some places moved to using nuclear later, and poof, carbon neutral.
In the end a transition is easier to divvy up progress with small architecture changes, not small bits of absolute carbon emissions / pollution
They arenโt using dirty energy to do electrolysis, theyโre steam reforming methane. It isnโt possible to do renewably.
What? It is absolutely possible to make hydrogen with renewable energy sources?
Methane can be produced renewably from bio-waste. H2 production by steam reforming lends itself well to CCS, and thus to being carbon neutral, even when the methane comes from non-renewable sources.
Yeah, fuck the other 70% of energy from renewables you lose when converting to hydrogen
Using hydrogen doesnโt emit carbon. But the principal way hydrogen is produced is called steam reformation. Itโs a process that turns methane (CH4) and water (2* H2O) into hydrogen (4* H2) and CO2 (i think, Iโm not an expert). So all the carbon get emitted as co2. So itโs not better, and there are a bunch of inefficiencies too. (The reformation process itself, and transportation challenges, and leakage). But theoretically, it does centralize the emissions which would make them easier to sequester so thereโs that.
In the USA for example about 99% of commercial Hydrogen is a byproduct of Steam Cracking Petroleum refinement. We have the technology to create hydrogen via other methods, but so far weโre not really utilizing them. Still, as a byproduct itโs better to use it than to not.
It was sad when the Physics Girl took Shellโs money to shill hydrogen fuel cells.
I get you need to eat but stillโฆa very shitty move.
Is she โokโ now? The last I knew she was completely incapacitated and couldnโt get out of bed. One hell of โlong covidโ caseโฆ :(
That video is a really hard watch. If youโve ever been in either of their positions taking care of a family member full time or relying on someone, you know the tremendous amount of love involved in it. Usually you see it as an afterthought, but what was amazing about Destinโs video is seeing it happen in real time.
I have one of the conditions some doctors suspect is the root cause of long COVID, mast cell activation disorder, and it absolutely sucks ass if itโs uncontrolled. It can make for some amazing naps, but they get old when itโs all you can do.
Iโm fineโish now, although I guzzle the contents of a small pharmacy every month.
I.didnt know her at all before this comment chain.
But it is interesting.
By big fear short of everyone dying in covid was these symptoms would be far more widespread.
Everyone seems to have forgotten about covid now
The videos were made before she got long covid. I donโt know how well sheโs doing now. My only updates about her are from the host of veritasium and only when I go looking for his videos.
Destin from Smarter Every Day visited them. https://youtu.be/xbcjf-hrOAs?feature=shared
She canโt even make videos in her current state. This was done well before then. The fact that she is able to have the medical care she has now is a sign she didnโt need that money though. She was obviously making enough from other more ethical sources. Now if she made that, I could excuse it, but it wasnโt done now.
That said, her medical bills shouldnโt be an issue for anyone. There are people out there in the same state but with much less support. They shouldnโt have to suffer even more because they canโt afford it.
Sheโs still got an income from Patreon, though I donโt know how much it is. Also, depending on her income and savings level she could have coverage through Medicare or Medicaid. Source: Iโm a young person with CFS that is on one of those two because Iโm too fucked up to do anything remotely approaching work.
I remember coming away from her videos with the perception that hydrogen fuel cells are dumb. So she did a pretty bad job shilling it, if that is the case.
They are far from dumb. Fuel cells are one of the few ways that hydrogen can be consumed in a green way.
Kari Byron, formerly of MythBusters fame, recently put out an ad for Shell. I believe sheโs also committed to a 3 year โdocuseriesโ for them. See here for a thread on Lemmy.world with a link to the video
I canโt find the specific video but here is the first video in her series: https://piped.video/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY
She says that the hydrogen is sourced using water and renewables but itโs highly sus that Shell (or BP; I canโt remember) was sponsoring the series.
Shell does that all the time. Among the oil companies, they seem to be the biggest advocates for hydrogen.
They 100% know that electrolysis methods wonโt be economically viable. The path through hydrogen goes through traditional hydrocarbon sources.
One maybe possibly exception is the recent finds of underground hydrogen sources. Still unclear if thatโs going to be economically viable. But even if it is, we would just add it to the list of decarbonized energy sources. Weโre not short of solutions; weโre short of political capital to implement them.
She says that the hydrogen is sourced using water and renewables but itโs highly sus that Shell (or BP; I canโt remember) was sponsoring the series.
Well, if you make a single hydrogen atom from renewable and add that into a huge tank of dirty hydrogenโฆTechnically you could claim that the hydrogen is sourced from renewables.
Well, supposedly almost all hydrogen was made not long after the Big Bang went bang, with a tiny bit getting once in a while produced by the spontaneous formation of particle and anti-particle pairs, if Iโm not mistaken.
Yeah, but then it combines with stuff and is no longer hydrogen. For example, a lot of it on earth is bound with oxygen in a from known as dihydrogen monoxide. You can input energy to separate the two hydrogen from the oxygen, but itโs not freely available. This is a useful way to spend excess energy to store the energy for later or to move, but not if you donโt have excess clean energy.
You can also get some from things like Methane (CH4, aka natural gas). This is how most of the gas companies are producing it, and it obviously isnโt clean. They like to pretend itโs clean by saying using the hydrogen just produces water, but obviously the hydrogen didnโt just appear.
Helium was made from fusion of hydrogen so haha it always has been hydrogen
Petroleum companies boast h2 vehicles not bcz they love environment but they get profit from petroleum itself (h2 is made from petroleum iirc)
Is there a community for green memes like this? Love it
With excess power from renewables. Which is highly inefficient. But better than not producing power when you could.
Thatโs the ideal case, but in practice much of it is directly derived from natural gas instead of electrolysis
In 2022 less than 1% of hydrogen production was low-carbon.[1] Fossil fuels are the dominant source of hydrogen, for example by steam reforming of natural gas.[2]
Thatโs what a transition is though, the new things need to be tested and built up but itโs pointless making green hydrogen if thereโs nothing using it so we need both to be developed at the same time.
Weโre moving towards having good uses for excess power at peek generation which will make wind and solar much better investments, personally I prefer sequestered SAF but hydrogen has a great chance of helping stabilize the grid which will make transition much easier
Hah! Itโs amazing how many people are still hanging onto the delusion that hydrogen is made from renewables when almost every ounce of commercial hydrogen fuel is made by cracking petroleum products.
What youโre saying is true. I still want to point out that developing hydrogen infrastructure based on non-renewable hydrogen today, helps lay the groundwork for using primarily renewable hydrogen tomorrow, because weโre developing storage, transportation, and fuel cell technology.
Also: Methane can be produced from renewables, so developing steam reforming technology today, using non-renewable methane, helps lay the groundwork for renewable-based hydrogen production tomorrow.
Finally: Steam reforming lends itself well to CCS, so hydrogen production from renewable methane + CCS is a potentially viable path to a carbon-negative future.
But hydrogen infrastructure isnโt better long term than regular electric and battery infrastructure. You need quite unique circumstances like being highly dependent on high energy density while being located in a place where youโre far from an electric grid. Like an island in a stormy place (without access to wave power, etc) or long haul trucks out in nowhere or electric airplanes. Almost anything else should use better options
Thereโs no particular reason to store up power with hydrogen like that. We have tons of grid scale storage solutions. Heating up sand will work, or spinning up flywheels. Flow batteries are looking promising. Weโre not stuck on the limitations of lithium batteries for this purpose. There are so many other possibilities, and hydrogen production is not likely to come out on top.
